Mr Monk and th3 Math3matician
by Ivette Boveda
Summary: In this crossover with Monk, Charlie suspects that a colleague was murdered through automotive sabotage. Can these two geniuses solve this mystery before they drive each other crazy? Chapter 14 now up chsr 1, 11, 4 revised
1. Default Chapter

"We can't take this any further" Don told his brother one morning. "To us it was clearly an accident."

"No, I don't think so" Charlie gave Don a look.

"I know you don't wanna think so…."

"Hans' car was sabotaged!" Charlie insisted. Before the argument could continue, Don's cell phone rang and he left Charlie's office.

After spending some time brooding, he remembered reading about a brilliant P.I named Adrian Monk, in the newspaper, when he was in San Francisco to do a presentation. The sleuth had solved a rather difficult case involving mail bombings, and a suspect in a coma.

444

"Larry, could you take over some my classes?" Charlie asked his colleague over lunch. "I need to go to San Francisco."

"Why?" Larry knew that there were not to be any conferences in that city any time soon.

"To see a private investigator."

"Why?" Larry wondered why Charlie would hire a private investigator.

"To look into Hans' death." Charlie replied. He had been a colleague who had been killed in a car crash. Charlie believed that the car had been sabotaged.

4444

After short plane trip(he had a friend in San Francisco look up the address in the yellow pages), he went straight to the man's house. Monk's assistant, Natalie, a woman with short, blonde hair answered the door.

"Hi!" Charlie began. "I'd like to see Adrian Monk?"

"Sure. Come in!" she told him. Then she led the mathematician to an immaculate living room. There were pictures on the wall of a crime scene involving a bombing. The sleuth busily vacuumed his ceiling. He stood on a ladder and made left to right motions with the vacuum attachment.

"Mr Monk? We've got a client." Natalie gently announced.

"I'm Charles Eppes." The mathematician introduced himself then continued despite Monk's lack of response . "A colleague of mine was murdered because his car was sabotaged" Charlie wondered why anyone would bother vacuuming their ceiling.

"What makes you say that?" the sleuth asked as he stopped his vacuuming. He was now interested.

"Could I have a pencil and paper?" Charlie requested.

"Coming right up!" Natalie quickly went to get the items. Monk went off the ladder, put away the vacuum, and joined Charlie in the living room. Already the latter had filled a piece of paper with equations.

" If a car is going….." the mathematician began.

Monk straightened the paper. Then, with a wipe, he got the pencil from the genius and started to erase them.

"What are you doing?" the idea of anyone, especially a nonmathematician erasing his work shocked and angered him. He would not be tolerant of Larry, his good friend, doing this.

"Your equations are crooked." Monk explained as he fastidiously erased in straight right to live motions.

"Why don't you show Mr. Monk the newspaper you've got?" Natalie suggested as she had seen Charlie put it on the coffee table. She figured that it was related to the case.

"Well, it's got pictures of the accident" Charlie growled and gave him the newspaper. The sleuth carefully studied them.

"The angle of that car isn't right." Monk commented

"That's what I was trying to show you!" Charlie exclaimed. It amazed him that Monk could see that the angle was wrong just by looking at the pictures and without math

"Was he working on anything worth a lot of money?"

"Nothing that would generate interest outside the math community."

The next day, they all left San Francisco for Los Angeles. Charlie went by plane, Monk and his assistant went by car.

TBC


	2. Chapter 2

"You're back already?" Alan asked when his son came home.

"Yeah."

"So this hot shot PI…he didn't wanna help?"

"Yeah, but he's coming by car. I offered to pay for his airfare, but turns out he's afraid of flying. I tried to show him that the mathematical odds of dying in a car were greater, but he just erased my equations."

"Really?"

"He said that they weren't lined up enough" Charles rolled his eyes at the memory. "But he agreed that the car was at the wrong angle, just by looking at the pictures in the newspaper!"

"So you have faith in this guy?"

"Yeah." Charlie said. "He does consulting work for the San Francisco P.D."

"Really?"

Eventually, Monk and his assistant showed up at the house, and the sleuth started to straighten picture frames, and pick up dirty dinner dishes from the living room.

"Why is he cleaning?" Alan asked. "Look, Mr..um…"

"Monk" Charlie finished.

"There's no need for that. You're a guest." He started to get annoyed and be insulted.

"He has severe O.C.D" the mathematician told his dad, as he fastidiously cleaned the coffee table, the television, and dusted the sofas, as well as the recliner.

"So you're a mathematician?" the assistant asked to Charlie in the meantime. She found him attractive and nice

"Yeah. I'm a professor at CalSci" he told her "I also do some consulting work on the side." Charlie found her attractive as well.

"He's done stuff for the F.B.I" Alan boasted, sensing the mutual attraction.

"Cool" she said lamely.

Meanwhile, Adrian had found the cleaning materials and had started to scrub the kitchen sink so that he could wash the dishes. Of course, being him, the sink would be cleaned again when he finished. With a sigh, he realized that the dish rack had to be cleaned as well, and that he did. The sleuth's idea of a through wash on plates consisted of three rounds of scrubbing and rinsing. Also, he moved the scrubber clockwise (he found some unused ones). As for utensils, he scrubbed them in a left to right zigzag motion and rinsed them four times.

By and by, Alan checked on his guest. The idea of a visitor cleaning his house went against what he had been taught and the values he had tried to pass down to his sons. He noticed that only half the dishes (there had been some from breakfast) were finished.

"Need help?" he asked.

"No"

TBC


	3. Chapter 3

Finished with the kitchen, Adrian asked. "Where do you keep the vacuum?"

"My son isn't paying you to clean this house!" Alan griped.

"It helps him think" the assistant argued.

"Tell him where it is dad" Charlie said. He could relate to Monk's needing his environment to be a certain way in order for him to think.

Don came home to the sleuth vacuuming the living room. Charlie, Alan, and Natalie ate pound cake on the dining room table.

"So this is your idea of helping dad?" the F.B.I agent teased. "Hiring a house keeper?"

Alan quickly took his eldest son aside.

"This is your fault!" he scolded. "If you had taken the time to help your brother, he would not have hired this quack who calls himself a private detective!"

"He's a P.I?" Don wrinkled his face in skepticism and made a mental note to do a background check.

"With OCD…" Alan said. "He just comes into the house and starts to clean. Not a word about the case!"

"What's his name?"

"Adrian Monk"

Thusly, Don introduced himself to the assistant and Monk.

"Hi! I'm Don, Charlie's older brother"

"I'm Natalie and this is Mr. Monk" She pointed to Adrian and shook Don's hand. Discreetly, the agent took Charlie aside.

"Where'd you find this guy?"

"I read about him in the newspaper, when I was in San Francisco for a symposium." Charlie explained "He used to be a cop, but then he got severe O.C.D when his wife died from a car bombing."

"Okay…."

"Charles?" Adrian stopped his vacuuming for a minute. "Do you know of Hans having any enemies among the faculty?"

"No. CalSci is a pretty small school. Everybody would have known about it."

"What about students?"

"I asked around, they loved him!" Charles commented.

"I'll need to see the intersection"

"It's already nine o'clock!" Alan pointed to a window, and everyone could see the purple sky of night.

"We'll go tomorrow then." The sleuth continued his vacuuming.

TBC


	4. Chapter 4

The next day, Don ran a background check on Monk.

"Who's that?" Terry asked as she looked over his shoulder.

"Some P.I Charles hired"

"Why?"

"He thinks that someone sabotaged the car of a colleague, causing him to crash."

"And you think that it was just an accident?"

"Yeah" Don swiveled his chair to face her. Their desks were across from each other.

"So does he check out?"

"Yeah. He is a P.I with severe OCD"

"OCD?" As a profiler, Terry knew about psychological disorders.

"Textbook" Don said. "When I came went to see dad and Charlie, last night, he was vacuuming the house."

"Alan must have loved that" Terry joked.

Meanwhile, Charlie took Monk and Natalie to see the intersection where the professor died. As the sleuth closely examined it, a German Shepard, on a leash, came by, causing Monk to slowly walk away, especially when Charlie started to talk to its owner, a friend who taught Biology at CalSci.

"Mr. Monk, where are you going?" Natalie asked.

"Away from the dog."

When the canine and its owner left, the sleuth went back to work.

"I need to talk to some of his students and colleagues."

"Sure thing"

The mathematician led them to Larry's office. As soon as they entered, Monk proceeded to organize and clean the professor's desk, which was a chaotic miasma, by sorting out the papers, picking up folders and dusting with a wipe.

"I was under the impression that he came here to ask me about Professor Hans?" the man asked Charlie while staring at Monk

"He has O.C.D" Charlie explained

"How well did you know him?" the sleuth asked, as he alphabetized a pile of graded tests by last name."

"Well, we had lunch a few times with others"

"Did he ever discuss his work?" The sleuth closely inspected an exam.

"He liked to talk about String theory….." Larry stopped when he saw that Monk crossed out an 'A' on a test and wrote a very neat 'F' above it.

"What are you doing?" Larry glared at him.

"This student cheated."

The two professors, plus Natalie just looked at him.

"Look at the third problem" Monk pointed.

"What about it?"

"The lead is darker" Monk said. "Meaning that the cheater pressed harder with the pencil out of anxiety."

"It was a test!" Natalie said.

"These problems gave the cheater more stress than the others." the Monk said. "Being caught at cheating is worse than failing an exam."

"I've yet to see the deviation that you are talking about" Larry told him sardonically.

"Did you proctor the test yourself?" the sleuth inquired.

"No, one of my T.A.s did." Larry said. "And I trust her completely."

"How is the classroom arranged during a test?"

"Every other seat is empty." Larry answered then asked wryly. "Didn't Charles hire you to find out about Dr. Hans?"

"Let's go talk to Dr. Kenny." Charles urged, annoyed that Monk was distracted yet again.

"Theoretically, couldn't the student's extra anxiety, which you claim is evident, be a result of the problem itself?" Larry asked.

"There is no evidence of erasing on the problems on the student cheated on." Monk showed Larry what he meant as Charlie put a hand over his face in frustration and shook his head.

TBC


	5. Chapter 5

Not listening, Monk checked the other exams in the pile for cheating. He found three others.

"We need to talk to Dr. Kenny before he leaves for the day" Charlie said with an impatient sigh after a while.

"Mr. Monk, the tests can wait" Natalie said.

"Let me worry about cheating among my students." Larry told Adrian.

Of course, by the time the sleuth finished, they could not locate Dr. Kenny.

At dinner, it was just Charlie and Alan. Monk and Natalie had gone back to their hotel.

"How'd it go?"

"He spent most of the afternoon looking at Larry's graded exams, to check for cheating"

"But he's not a mathematician!" Alan took a bite of potatoes au gratin. "How could he know?"

"Something about the writing being darker." Charlie smashed his peas out of frustration. "He claimed to have found four exams with evidence of cheating."

"He is an ex-cop. They tend to be more suspicious of people."

Just then, Don came in.

"Charlie was just telling me that the P.I he hired spent the whole afternoon checking exams to look for signs of cheating." Alan commented to get Don up to speed.

"It started when we went to Larry's office, and he decided to alphabetize some graded tests…"

"And he's actually solved cases?" Don asked as he served himself some food.

"Yeah! Once he proved that a guy in a coma sent mail bombs"

Alan and Don stopped eating and stared at him.

"Here is what happened: The guy glued the packages inside of those large, blue mail boxes you see on the sidewalks, using a special glue that last like a few months…"

"After which it would drop with the other mail" Don interrupted.

"His plan was to right before that was to happen, commit a hit and run in front of cops to land in jail for the perfect alibi." Charles continued.

"Is this when he got into a coma?" Alan asked. "During the hit and run?"

"Yeah." Charlie took another bite of meatloaf. "It didn't go as planned."

TBC


	6. Chapter 6

The next day, Natalie, with Monk in tow, picked up Charlie .

"You're driving too fast!" Adrian complained.

"I'm going at the speed limit, Mr. Monk"

"Going too slow can actually increase your chances of a car crash." Charlie told the sleuth.

They were able to catch Dr. Kenny, a balding man in his sixties, just after a class session had ended.

"Frank, this is Adrian Monk. He's a Private investigator"

"Private consultant" Adrian corrected.

"Looking into Professor Han's murder"

"He died in a car crash" Kenny wrinkled his forehead.

"Monk believes that his car was sabotaged, as I do"

"The car ended in the wrong angle" the sleuth added,

"Hans had students that hated him, but not to that point!" Kenny told them.

"What about other faculty?" Monk wanted Kenny's side of the story.

"Nothing aside from ya know, office politics. The kind you see in any other workplace."

Charlie thanked his colleague.

"I need to talk to some of his students"

"I'll put the word out." Charlie said.

With Amita's help, Charlie gave Monk the numbers of a few students.

A day later, they were looking for one of them. The undergrad dormitories at CalSci were all identical two story Missionesque buildings; however, each of them had their own reputations, and names. As they walked to the dorm, they saw students on unicycles. The student they were looking for lived in a suite in which he had his own room, but had to share a bathroom and a living room with a few others. A young man with green hair opened the door.

"We're looking for Sanjay?" Monk said.

"That's me!" a young man with black hair and dark circles around his eyes said from behind the green haired lad.

Monk looked with disgust at the living room, filled with take out containers, papers, books, DVDs, and X-box games.

"Professor Eppes told me that you were looking into Prof Hans death." Sanjay said.

"Yes." The sleuth started to pick up the take out containers. "Did he ever talk about his work?"

"Yeah. ."

"Where's the trash can?" Adrian cut the student short.

"Over here."

"Was it anything worth killing for?" Natalie asked, as Monk threw away some trash and started to gather all the DVDs and alphabetize them.

"Lots of theoretical stuff."

"Like what?"

"He loved to talk about the mathematics of artificial intelligence."

"Do you know if there were a lot of engineering majors in his classes?" Adrian asked.

"Well, every undergrad at CalSci has to take a certain amount of math courses to graduate, no matter the major." Sanjay answered. "He must have had a few."

"Adrian Monk?" A young man said as he entered the living room with bed hair. He had just taken a nap. "My sister's told me all about you. She works fraud."

"Detective Huang?" The sleuth had helped the student's sibling with a couple of cases.

"Yeah!"

"He's here about Hans' death." Sanjay explained.

"You think someone killed him?"

"Yes" the sleuth replied. "By sabotaging his car."

After some more conversation, Monk decided to see the next student on his list.

TBC


	7. Chapter 7

The next student's dorm was in the building next door, but he was not home. Suddenly, Monk commented.

"Biometrics uses math."

"So you think this professor got killed over his research?"

"No, but it's related somehow." He said.

Quickly, they went to see Charlie, who was glad to see them. He and Amita were looking at a web site in his office.

"I just found out that he consulted for International Biometric Group" the mathematician told them. "Working on some top secret stuff"

"I see you found their home page." Natalie said.

"IBG is the biometric security industry's leading consulting and technology services firm. Since 1996, IBG has provided technology-neutral and vendor-independent biometrics services, strategy, and solutions to financial institutions, integrators, government agencies, and high-tech firms." Amita read to them.

"Look at that" the sleuth pointed to the lower left hand corner of the screen.

"What?"

"There's a spot." Monk got a wipe and took care of it. "Hans' knowledge and experience in this field would be a valuable asset to criminals"

"Like mobsters?" Natalie asked. "Don't they usually just shoot people who get on their bad side?"

"We're talking about sophisticated criminals." Charlie cut in. "I'm calling Don."

Unfortunately, Don was not at his desk.

"Why don't you get a consulting job with the company, see what you can find out." Natalie suggested with a shrug.

"That's a great idea!"

"You're going undercover?" Alan asked Charlie as the latter packed just after the academic year ended. It worried him enough when his eldest, a trained F.B.I. agent, did this sort of thing.

"I need to work in this company as a consultant so I can learn more about it." Charlie said(Monk and his assistant had returned to San Francisco to await new information)

"Couldn't you at least work at their Los Angeles Office?"

"They don't have one."

"Isn't there anything closer?" In Alan's mind, Charlie was getting in over his head.

"The other one is in London."

"Where are you going to live?"

"A friend of mine teaches at NYU."

New York, with its excellent public transportation (as opposed to L.A's), allowed the person without a car great mobility. Charlie was shocked to see how packed the subway was during rush hour. With this brilliant mind, he had quickly figured the system out. The office was in Battery Park Plaza. He had gotten the job by sending his resume, and offering to help with certain things.

" _Los__ marcianos llegaron ya, y llegaron bailando rica-cha…_" Someone started to sing using the window as a percussion instrument, as Charlie quickly got into the subway car during his second day of work.. Little did he know that someone was following him.

This came for you" His friend gave him a box addressed to him the next evening. Opening it, he found a nasty surprise: the head of a dead pigeon.

TBC


	8. Chapter 8

Both men covered their months in shock and nausea.

"Oh my hell!" his friend, Tom, exclaimed. "Is it even real?"

"Smells real" Charlie said.

After taking several digital photographs at different angles and calling the police, Charlie called Monk, who fortunately for him, had just finished a case and was free.

"Is Monk home?" he asked Natalie, who answered the phone.

"Yeah why?"

"Someone sent me a dead pigeon's head."

"Ugh" she said, and put the phone on her shoulder. "Mr. Monk! It's Charlie the math guy! Someone sent him a pigeon head."

"When did this happen?" Adrian asked as he got the phone.

"Today." The professor told him. "I need you to come to New York"

"Why?" The idea of flying made him panic and temporarily lose some IQ points.

"Look, why don't I just send you the pictures, for now?" Charlie sighed. "By email."

"I don't email, but Natalie does."

So, the assistant gave Charlie her email address, and just then the police came to ask some routine questions.

A mere hour later, Natalie had printed versions of the photographs, which Adrian studied closely.

"The bird was beheaded by a Wüsthof Trident kitchen knife." He told the mathematician when they had their next conversation.

"Aren't those expensive?" Charlie remembered that Don had gotten Alan a set for his last birthday.

"Yes."

"Anything else?"

"The bird was alive when it was beheaded."

"How can you tell?"

"The look in its eyes"

This sent shudders up Charlie's spine.

TBC


	9. Chapter 9

"And he beheaded the pigeon in his kitchen" Monk added.

"How can you know that?"

"Like you said, those are expensive knives. That's where they would be kept." Monk added. "You must have been followed."

"What if whoever did this tries something on Don or dad?" Charlie began to muse to himself in an agitated state. As a result, he hung up on the sleuth, who had more to say, and called his brother.

"Agent Eppes?" Don automatically answered the phone.

"Are you and dad okay?"

"Yeah we're fine" He tried to calm Charlie down. "What's going on buddy?"

"Someone sent me a dead pigeon's head." The professor said. "It might be related to my working for IBG"

"Did you call the police?" Don cursed himself for not taking Charlie's investigation more seriously.

"Yeah."

"I need you to quit and come back home. I'll look into this." The agent's worry could be heard in his voice.

"I can't lead whoever did this to dad!" his agitation made him speak quite fast. "And that person could ….."

"Take a deep breath" Don advised. "I'll be on the next plane."

Meanwhile, Natalie somehow talked Monk into going to New York.

TBC


	10. Chapter 10

Monk and Natalie showed up first at the residence Charlie shared with his friend the next evening. All around there were large pieces of paper with equations on them. The mathematician absent mindedly let them in and continued with his work.

"Give me an eraser" Adrian told his assistant. The crooked equations and hastily written numbers were a torment to the sleuth.

"Why?"

"It's too messy" he answered as he pointed to one of the sheets of paper; Natalie glared at him. "I'll have it rewritten before he notices." For the sleuth, Charlie's scribbles were unbearable to look at. It didn't make sense to him how anyone could work like this.

Charlie went to refer to it justbefore Monk had finished erasing. He noticed that almost everything he had written on that sheet was gone.

"What happened to the equations I had here?" He picked up the paper in disbelief.

"I erased them"

"Why?" Charlie had been working on stuff that could be the key to figuring what type of work that might have gotten Hans killed. "I needed them!" This upset interrupted his train of thought.

Just then, Don knocked on the door, and Natalie let him in, when she verified who it was.

"What's going on?" the agent asked. He had heard Charlie yelling.

"He erased my equations!" Charlie's face was red with anger, and frustration. Deep, dark circles surrounded his eyes. Don recognized the signs of overwork in his brother.

"They weren't straight" Monk said with a straight face, thinking that the others would agree to his logic.

"Easy buddy…" Don calmed his brother as he glared at the sleuth. The agent hated it when his younger brother was upset or neglected to take care of himself because of math. "When was the last time you ate?"

"Yesterday morning" Charlie said.

"I'll go see what's in the fridge" Natalie said as she gave Monk a look.

TBC


	11. Chapter 11

Quickly, Natalie whipped up a ham sandwich, but Charlie refused to eat it; instead he feverishly tried to rewrite what Monk had erased.

"You need to eat something" Don insisted.

"Your brother's right" Natalie assented, concerned about the fact that the mathematician hadn't eaten for over a day. She stood next to Charlie, carrying the sandwich in a plate.

"He just had to erase the most vital equations." Charlie seethed to himself, as he reentered his own little world.

"He sure did" Don assented, surprised at how through Monk had been. It looked as if Charlie hadn't written anything at all in the parts that he hadn't retouched. The sleuth's eccentricities, which Don had seen in L.A and here in New York, made Charlie look socially and emotionally well adjusted by comparison.

"Charlie took pictures of the pigeon's head" Natalie said as she took out the paper copies she printed for Monk from her purse.

"The bird was beheaded with a Wüsthof Trident knife" Monk said as the agent looked at what Natalie had given him.

"What makes you say that?" the agent asked. He was used to medical examiners figuring this out, not ex-cops with severe OCD.

The sleuth gave a very detailed explanation, which satisfied Don, who finally realized that Monk knew what he was doing. The sleuth's observations were very astute, and the result of a trained, as well as brilliant, eye. Don could not believe that he didn't see some of the things that Monk had pointed out.

"And it was alive when it was beheaded" the sleuth added.

"But why a pigeon?" Don mused aloud.

"I've been asking myself the same question" Monk commented.

"You and Charlie think that Hans' work at IBG had something to do with his murder?" Don asked.

"Yes." Monk told him.

"I checked him and the company out. I couldn't find anything suspicious" Don said with a sigh and a shrug. However, he still worried that the pigeon head was the murderer's way of threatening his younger brother's life.

"Charlie, you really should eat" Natalie nagged the mathematician, as Don and Monk talked.

Again, the mathematician ignored her.

Monk tried to straighten one of the papers, filled with equations, that Charlie had lying around. The sleuth could not bear to see it like that.

"Step away from that paper!" Don, with a fierce look, ordered Monk as if he were a suspect under arrest. The agent worried that Adrian would again erase equations.

"Charlie refuses to eat" Natalie said worriedly.

Don firmly took the pencil from his younger brother's hand and coaxed him into eating the sandwich.

"Have you made any progress?" Monk asked with a grimace as he saw Charlie ravenously eat the sandwich in a few bites.

"I think I know what Hans was working on" Charlie began but before he could continue, Monk yelled "Oh my God!"

TBC


	12. Chapter 12

"I stepped on a cheeto !" Monk jumped from the old, dingy, blue couch. Charlie sat on the nearby loveseat as did Don. Natalie was seated near Monk.

"We're gonna need back up for this!" Don snarled sarcastically; he really wanted to hear his brother's theory.

"My shoe is going to be ruined!" The sleuth grumbled.

"I'm sure you'll live!" Natalie rolled her eyes and gave him a wipe, which Adrian grabbed and frantically used to clean.

"Can I continue?" Charlie asked in an acerbic tone. His hand gestures and expressive eyes belied his exasperation. "As I was saying……"

"I need another wipe!" Monk ordered because he used up the wipe he had in his hand.

"Could you just forget about your shoe for a minute and let him talk?" Don gave Monk a fierce look while putting on an authoritative voice.

TBC


	13. Chapter 13

"I know who sent you the pigeon's head" Monk said suddenly, as everyone stared at him.

"Are you just saying that so I won't fire you?" Charlie asked doubtfully. The possibility had been on his mind since Monk had come into the apartment and erased the vital equations.

"On your second day of work, I called you in the morning." Monk began, but stopped when he noticed that Charlie had stray hairs over his right ear. "Could you, put your hair behind your right ear?"

Sighing, Charlie complied.

"In the background I heard someone say 'Want some paella, Charlie? Frank made it.' " Monk continued as he picked lint off of Don's shirt.

"So?" Charlie couldn't see where the sleuth was going.

"For most people, bringing Paella to work would be too expensive, unless, they made it themselves." Monk began. "Being it's such a complex dish, it's the kind of thing only someone serious about cooking would attempt to make for several people on workday when he would have to probably have to stay up all night to have it ready in the morning."

"Sounds like a gourmet." Don commented. "and like the kind of guy who would buy a set of Wustof Trident knives."

"And know how to use them" Monk added.

TBC


	14. Chapter 14

"I've got friends in the New York office." Don said.

"I'll question Frank tomorrow" Monk said.

"See what you can find out." Don told him.

"Hans must have been working on ways to get around biometric systems" Monk mused. "That would considered worth killing for."

"He would have the expertise and experience" Don assented.

Charlie just stared at Monk. That was just what he was going to tell the others about before Monk had interrupted him more than once.

"And Frank would have known about it." Monk continued.

8888

The next day, Monk and Natalie went to Charlie's workplace in the early afternoon .Everyone thought it best for Monk to avoid the rush hour crowds in the subway.

"Who are you here to see?" a tall, gruff security guard asked them from his desk at the lobby.

"Dr. Charles Eppes" Natalie said.

"What's his extension?" the guard asked. "I have to call him first" The policy was that visitors check in with the front security desk before they could come up. There had been problems with stalkers and abusive spouses.

"21134"

The guard called and waited for a minute.

"He's not answering his phone." He told them.

"Could you try again?" Monk requested urgently.

"I'll do it!" Natalie rolled her eyes as she opened her cell phone and dialed Charlie's work number and left a message. "Charlie, this is Natalie. I'm with Mr. Monk. We're here at the lobby. Could you come down and meet us?" With that she hung up.

Twenty minutes later, they saw Charlie, who told them with a sigh "Frank called in sick today"

TBC


End file.
